The Secrets to the Phenomenal Success of Copyblogger

Special Guests: Brian Clark

Brian Clark, Founder of Copyblogger, joins the Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss the mechanics of a content-driven company, the teachability of content marketing success, and the ongoing changes to the original social media as blogs become multi-author blogs.

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How to Communicate Your Value

Tweetable Moments

Recorded live from Social Media Marketing World 2014 in San Diego, it’s Social Pros! Copyblogger started in 2006 with Brian Clark blogging about what has become content marketing, and in the years to follow it has burgeoned into basically an online multi-author digital magazine. Blogs, Brian points out, were the original social media, and their comment sections were where people could talk to each other. Now that Copyblogger offers ebooks and seminars for creating great content, can anyone have meaningful content marketing success with these tools? There are fundamentals of content marketing, and then there’s execution. Someone like Brian can teach you the fundamentals, but the execution will always be, to some extent, a creative process. Just like you can’t “teach” someone to be the next George Lucas, you can’t really teach someone to be the next Brian Clark. The great part is that all the metrics available to us now allow us to see what works and what doesn’t. It turns out that a lot of the money we were spending on traditional media wasn’t actually getting us anywhere. “Now we can track everything, and we’re all held accountable. We’re finding what works.” Of all the things Copyblogger does – the website, the social, the webinars – it’s email that is the “tie that bonds.” Copyblogger’s approach has always been organic, with content fueling search. If you took away search and social tomorrow, Brian could still deliver his content and stay in touch with his customers through email. All of this, in part, led to the recent decision to remove comments from the Copyblogger blog; the location of the conversation has changed, so Copyblogger has to change with it. Like PewDiePie, who has 25+ million subscribers on his YouTube channel that reviews video games as he plays them, Copyblogger works to build its audience by providing great content. That audience is the business’ greatest asset, and it’s the social media marketer and content marketer’s job to communicate that value to the C-suite.

Social Media Number of the Week: 65%

Ahead of Social Media Marketing World, 65% of polled attendees indicated that they wanted to learn more about Google+. As well they should be, says Brian. “Marketers should be dying to get on Google+.” It’s going to be the most beneficial for search and business. Facebook is invisible to Google and now charging you to reach your audience, Twitter is great for distribution but best for real-time events, and Google+ comes in to fill that gap. The question for Jeff is, “Can they get enough people to migrate over and make it as pain-free as possible?” Google is the most vertically integrated, so they can leverage that to outcompete their biggest competitors. At this point, Google+ seems to be in a kind of purgatory. Their product isn’t starkly better, but their position seems to be favorable. We’ll see where things go from here.

Tweetable Moments

The Big Two

What’s your one tip for becoming a social pro? “Create social objects — something people value and want to share. It’s gonna look good, it adds value to the people you share it with, and it satisfies the business objectives of the creator.” If you could do a Skype call with any living person, who would it be? Henry Rollins, classic punk rock guy of Black Flag, spoken word poet, and a force to be reckoned with in media. See you next week!

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Social Pros is one of the most popular marketing podcasts in the world, and was recently named the best podcast at the Content Marketing Awards. Listen for real insight on the real people doing real work in social media. You get the inside stories and behind-the-scenes secrets about how companies like Ford, Dell, IBM, ESPN and dozens more staff, operate and measure their social media programs.